


dress code optional

by villanelle



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villanelle/pseuds/villanelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shinya hasn’t bothered with Windsor knots for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dress code optional

**Author's Note:**

> Eleven pages later, I still fail at writing anything beyond foreplay.

 

_\- necktie -_

 

It’s the slowest afternoon shift they’ve had in a while, and from the corner of the room where their newest Inspector and their oldest Enforcer are sitting, Shinya’s ears pick up the mention of his name. In his peripheral vision, he notices Tsunemori darting a glance in his direction before quickly looking back down at whatever she and old Masaoka are so fixated on.

“Am I about to become the target of the mischief you two are plotting over there?” Shinya bluntly asks, and Tsunemori meets his eyes with an expression slightly apologetic but not culpable.

“No mischief on our part, I assure you Kougami-san. Mr. Masaoka is just showing me some old photos, and I couldn’t help but check the comparison.”

Old photos. No wonder they’re doing this now while Gino’s stepped out of the room. Compelled by his own curiosity, Shinya gets up and strides over to examine the photos Masaoka has unearthed for Tsunemori’s contemplation. Strewed across Masaoka’s workspace is a small pile, but one snapshot snags his attention and holds it. He’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Gino and Sasayama in the image, the three of them suited up, each of their crisp, pressed collars cinched with silk neckties knotted in a particular, preferred fashion. Despite the present coarseness of his hands, they still bear the memory of gliding along the cloth while executing the routine of a half Windsor. Shion, who’d flouted the office dress code even back then, always made fun of these prep school pretensions.

‘I bet a month’s salary that you guys even own pocket squares,’ she’d teased.

Shinya hasn’t bothered with Windsor knots for a long time. He’d retained some of his old-fashioned preferences, like his partiality towards printed books, but he scoffs inwardly at that previous taste for hand-tailored suits rather than holographically adjusted ones. What was the point? His purpose now hinges on getting his hands dirty, on letting the various viscous splatters that the human body could produce land on his sleeve rather than an Inspector’s.

“Well,” he questions Tsunemori. “Do I seem very different?”

Her eyes, warm honey-brown in spite of the office lighting's harsh glare, study him carefully and then flicker to the photo.

“If you’ve changed a great deal, Kougami-san,” Tsunemori says, her tone light though not effortlessly so. “Then I don’t think those changes were in your appearance.” Her gaze sweeps over him again, lingering at his loosened tie and following the lines of his throat. “It just seems that you might have smiled more back then.”

Ironically, he feels the right corner of his mouth tug upwards.

“Good assessment, Inspector.”

* * *

  
_\- parka -_

The morning forecast estimated a half inch of snow, an inch at most, and when they set out from headquarters to check on an area with reported spikes in stress levels, the flakes falling from the sky appear to correspond to that outlook, fluttering down intermittently and as lightly as a smattering of powdered sugar. For the most part, the businesses in the neighborhood seem to operate nocturnally, their doors and windows shuttered and their abundant signage dimmed of the neon colors that illuminate patrons’ nighttime crawls. The complaints had all been reported by people who’d visited the neighborhood in the last week, middling business managers and a few law associates with the same essential story. They had gone out to have a good time or to close a deal but with the intent to keep the festivities on the tamer side, and they'd woken up after ordering no more than two drinks per person to discover that their asses had been hauled into the streets, their wrists stripped of luxury watches and their wallets plucked clean of cash and credit.

Shion had traced the credit chips to at least a dozen different establishments, and Tsunemori goes through about half of the list, buzzing the doors fruitlessly and exchanging words with a few unsmiling proprietors, before halting in her tracks and muttering under her breath that there had to be a more efficient way. She’s shivering as she says it, and Shinya notices that the snow has built up to above her ankles.

“Here.” He sheds the parka on his back and holds it in her direction. “Put this on and put your hands in the pockets.”

“I’m fine, this jacket’s warm enough.” Tsunemori tugs the zipper up to her chin as if that proves her point, and the gesture’s a little childish, but her polite stubbornness provokes him to take another step forward. She’s wearing a dark blue jacket emblazoned with the bureau’s insignia, but he used to own one of those as well, and he knows for a fact that those jackets are better suited for rain rather than snow.

“Come on, you’ll be able to think about the case more clearly if you’re not frozen stiff.”

That gets her serious consideration, but then Tsunemori bounces a step back, tucking her hands under her arms in their slightly overlong sleeves and proclaiming again, “I’m hardly frozen. Besides, this jacket’s made out of heat-tech fibers. I might even be more insulated than you right now.”

Sighing, he makes a quick grab for her hand, and she’s surprised enough that she lets him slip two fingers into her right sleeve.

“Wow,” Shinya remarks, rubbing the thin edge of the sleeve between his thumb and pointer. “You’re right. This feels so insulated.”

“Your hands are colder than mine,” Tsunemori points out, but she doesn’t pull away. “You should really put your coat back on.”

She takes a hesitant step backwards and then pauses again. “Kougami-san? I think --” Tsunemori raises one foot and slams her heel down with emphasis, producing a dull thud under their feet. “There’s a hollow space here.”

She sweeps away an arc of snow with her shoe, revealing a metallic circular border, and he’s about to tell her to dismiss it as just another manhole when Tsunemori drops to her knees in the snow and twists her body so that her ear is nearly pressed to the ground. When she looks back up at him, her expression is both horrified and very, very sure.

“There's someone under here.”

They call one of the drones over to lift up the metal by its pick holes, and Tsunemori is quick to instruct them to elevate it slowly and carefully while she yells down to whomever is in the darkness that they ought to stand away from the hole if possible.

She turns out to be right.

Shining a flashlight into the subterranean cavity they’ve uncovered, Tsunemori almost drops it upon beholding the face of a young woman cringing in the depths. A couple of minutes into Tsunemori’s coaxing towards the woman, who only seems to back further into the shadows, and Shinya realizes that the woman might not even be Japanese. Sinking to the cold ground next to the Inspector, he calls out one of the few phrases he still remembers. If anything, the foreign words seem to send the woman into even deeper panic, but then Gino arrives behind them, and she seems to realize that there is nowhere else to go.

After they get the woman up to ground, it becomes evident that she is indeed a foreigner, perhaps brought ashore in a trade of freedom for refuge. Observing the woman shake her head at each inquiry emitted by the drone translating Gino’s questions, Shinya starts to feel pretty sure that the woman doesn’t even know the real name of the scum who kept her down there.

“Kougami-san?” Tsunemori says quietly, not looking at him but at the woman’s bare legs. “Would it be alright if we shared your coat after all? With her? She looks more likely to catch ill in this weather than any of us.”

“Yeah, ok.”

He watches Tsunemori hand the parka to the woman and hears the younger Inspector ask Gino, “What will happen to her?”

Shinya walks back to the car before he can catch the answer. He knows better than most that the system prefers to forget, or even more cleanly discard, its unwanted than keep them around.

 -----

Later, Shinya realizes that he must have been more tired than he thought and that the Inspectors must have spent a longer time wrapping things up in the neighborhood than he expected because he wakes with a slight jolt in the passenger seat as Tsunemori is starting up the car.

Her blue, Bureau-issued jacket is blanketed over him.

Her expression twitches, as if trying to arrange itself into a forced smile despite the downturn of her mouth, as her solemn eyes turn from peering out the window one last time to looking at him.

“It’s warm right? Just like I told you?”

Sitting up, he expects the ache of joints out in the biting cold all day, but mostly, he does indeed just feel warm.

“Yeah, it is.”

* * *

  

_\- dress -_

The Enforcers have the night off while their shepherds are out mingling at a government function, swarmed with their peer elites and superiors from the other central ministries. Fingers flipping idly through a book he’s already read twice, Shinya’s half-reclined on one of the couches in his quarters when his wristwatch lights up with a new message.

_Were these parties more exciting back in the day? Mr. Masaoka’s old stories had me convinced that I’d see something scandalous tonight._

A few seconds later, another pulsing glow.

_And that there would be more good food._

It’s not like there was ever a real honeymoon period when Division 1 was treating their newest recruit with kid gloves, but a solid two months into their acquaintance, Shinya feels permitted to think of Shepherd 2 as Akane rather than Tsunemori and to indulge in conversation outside of the workplace. His smile is quick but genuine as he scans the text and enters a reply.

_Sorry to disappoint. You only get to do sake shots with the prime minister after you take down a hundred criminals._

Half an hour passes by, and he supposes Akane must have found something of interest (or _someone_ insinuates a less kind voice) at the function to preoccupy her time when another message pops up.

_If I begged you to set off an elevated area stress level somewhere, would you do it?_

_Huh, is the night really turning out that poorly?_

_Let’s put it this way: watching Yayoi paint her nails would be more fun than talking with these Ministry of Economy analysts._

_Just tell Gino that you’re tired and want to call it a night._

When no further messages arrive after ten minutes, twenty minutes, Shinya assumes that she must have taken his advice and headed home, though he still glances sporadically at his wrist.

“Hey, do you want a strawberry?”

Akane is standing in the doorway, her head peeking past the frame as if seeking permission to enter this space. A polite but pointless gesture in his regard. Inspectors aren’t the ones that have to ask for permission here.

He raises an eyebrow. “Have you been engaging in petty theft, Inspector?”

Her presence acknowledged, Akane steps into the room, holding her purse rather carefully. She’s wearing a dress, the sleeveless sheath of it white and shimmery as she moves, with a square neckline cut modestly across her shoulders and a hem that flares just slightly above her shoes.

And then, as her path curves around one of the couches, he catches sight of the back of her dress. Or rather, the lack of it.

For a garment that seemed positively demure two seconds ago, the dress’s outstanding feature suddenly becomes how very backless it is. There might be a freckle, almost perfectly round and dark, above Akane’s left hip, but his mind churns already with the recognition that he should force this detail of her person from his memory by tomorrow.

“Spoilsport,” she calls him, and as she sits down, she pulls a small container, two plump, chocolate-covered strawberries rolling in its confines, out of her purse. “Don’t tell me you never snuck a plate of free extra food home when you were at school.”

“Too old to recall. Or maybe the memory loss is due to your first day rookie shot.”

Wincing, Akane bites down a tad on her lower lip. “I’m sorry, again, for that.” She leans back into the couch, fingers digging into the cushion closest to her, and his careless words seem to have set her off on a guilty tangent because another apology spills out. “I’m sorry for complaining back there too. The nerve, right? Whining about going to a party while Kagari and Mr. Masaoka and you don’t even have the option to go outside -- to go as you’d please.”

Wordlessly, Shinya looks up at the ceiling, the same ceiling he sees basically every night. No stars for him unless they were on-duty and needed out in the field. She was young, he reminds himself, and she was lucky. Lucky in the same way he’d been once. Seven hundred and twenty-one points on his graduating exam had guaranteed that nearly all the societal doors of opportunity were open to him, that there were options rather than restrictions.

“I believe you were going to offer me a share of your plunder?” he says, reverting their conversation to its earlier, more lighthearted tone.

“Oh, yes, um I already gave Kagari the lion’s share, but I wasn’t sure if you liked sweets anyway.”

She uncaps the lid, and Shinya takes one. Two bites into her own strawberry, Akane reasons, “Technically, I don’t think this counted as stealing. Aren’t government functions funded by our taxpayer money?”

“Hmm, you should’ve taken the caviar then.”

“Oooh, you’re right. I didn’t even try the caviar. Had two glasses of wine though.”

“Very indulgent. There’s an excuse you could use for another occasion. Tell Gino that you drank too much and that you don’t want to embarrass Division 1 in front of the higher-ups.”

“But I don’t get drunk.”

“You don’t get drunk and your coefficient never rises above 50. Tell me your ways, Inspector.”

She’s finished off her strawberry, quicker than him, chocolate on her thumb.

“Careful, you don’t want to stain your dress,” he points out, and his perusal, he assures himself, is strictly for helpful purposes. “Or is that a holo overlay?”

“Nope.”

“Figures. Holos aren’t so stingy with fabric.”

Akane’s whole body curls forward with her laugh. “This must be the side of you Shion warned me about once.”

For a moment, they both go silent, and Akane runs her clean hand down an invisible crease in the dress.

“No, this is real,” she murmurs again, and then, shyly and softly, she asks, “Would you like to feel?”

There’s a small trapezoid of space separating their two chairs, the armrests nearly meeting at a perpendicular angle. To Shinya, it feels like both an infinitesimal line and an immense gulf to cross.

“Akane.” His voice is as full of warning as it ought to be. “We both know that I shouldn’t.”

“Yes, I know,” she replies, her voice still pitched very softly, and yet, the trust in her eyes is an invitation all on its own. “I’m just telling you that you can, if you want to.”

He does. When she leans forward across the space between them, her initial kiss is close-mouthed and almost chaste, except in how her lips part just a bit at the end, a restrained exhale sending a pulse against his lower lip that amplifies every hungry nerve in him. Shinya’s responding mouth deepens the kiss, tasting the rich sweetness and lingering fruit on her tongue, and then he’s pulling Akane from her seat, drawing her close and closer with a hand on the small of her back and feeling like he’s discovered new sensations of touch. Her skin is already warm, and more heat blooms under his fingertips on the smooth planes that dip and incurvate until he forgets that the dress ever had material essence to begin with.

Akane leans back in his lap though, clearly more aware than he is of the zipper’s location, but she struggles more with the straps. As their mouths meet again, the dress is only half-slipping off of her, iridescent fabric scrunched between them and peeled to her bottom. He feels like he’s kissing a mermaid, his hands exploring her scales, half-cautious and half-wanting of her glitter to rub into his skin. Shinya can admit to himself now that he’s fond of the dress, wouldn’t mind seeing her in it again, but her exploration of his opened shirt collar nuzzles the strut of bone beneath his throat, contesting for the upper hand in these proceedings.

He’s always been damnably competitive. His hands push and drag the dress down, stroking over the skin uncovered, the slight ridge over her ribs, the soft slope of her belly, the apex of her thighs still veiled by the dress. With a frustrated noise, Akane gets up, shimmying the fabric down to the floor, and the transformation is complete, mermaid to naiad girl climbing back into his lap. 

An hour ago, he thought that his night was going to simply consist of rereading a novel, maybe looking over a case file or two. He could not have imagined this, would not have dared.

Akane, draped over him, forcibly self-extinguishing her moans by pressing wet oh’s into his shoulder as he fingers her, parting moist folds to slip in knuckle deep.

He barely trusts himself to speak, but he figures that if he’s going to hell anyway, he might as well sear the memory of _why_ into his brain.

“Akane,” he says, voice rough yet still entreating. “Lean back.”

She hesitates, unsure of how to support herself, but then her palms move backwards along his thighs, finding placement on his knees, and his eyes can trace the whole, bare slope of her. Looking down, he can see his fingers spreading her with coats of her own wet.

Inside of her, he curls his finger the same way he’d pull a trigger.

**  
**

* * *

 

_\- briefs -_

 

Prudence and common sense would usually prescribe that an office affair be conducted as far away from said office as possible.

And yet, some of the best secrets are kept right under people’s noses.

The rules for Inspectors shepherding their Enforcers around town are fairly simple and boil down to this: any and every occasion of an Enforcer leaving headquarters must be logged into digital records. While logging, the required details are the destinations, both intended and incidental, the length of time spent in each location, and the name of the accompanying Inspector.

Needless to say, Akane’s apartment is out of the question from the start.

This does not lessen the anxiety in either of them about using his quarters on the Enforcers' floor.

“I’ve never seen your room,” she says as she waits for him to turn on the light. More of a crypt than a room really. The illumination doesn’t do the space any particular favors. It’s still small and cramped, the couch that doubles as his bed taking up less space than the steel file cabinets and bookcases bordering the walls. Above his desk is a cartographic mess of sticky notes and scribblings, city maps and photos of varying resolution. If he stepped into this room during a case, he’d probably pin it down as a classic indicator of an obsessive mind. A criminal mind.

Akane, in her bright and colorful Friday casual, does not look like she belongs in this room, in the shadows with him. Closing and locking the door behind her, he feels quite the personification of Hades, stealing away Spring and keeping her from her mother.

But Akane’s blazer is already folded and draped over his chair, her shirt fluttering to the ground, and she’s looking over her bared shoulder, a playful eyebrow arched and her wicked mouth quipping, “Kougami-san, you seem to be confused about which situations call for wearing a shirt and which do not.”

Atmosphere fades into the background after that. He gets to divest her of her pants at least, dragging them down her legs so that his fingers are met with cotton instead. Boybriefs, seafoam blue with a pattern of floating pink jellyfish. Akane follows his gaze and flushes almost as pink.

“Guess I should start taking Shion’s advice and start buying some lacier underwear for this. Not that she knows about this. She was just trying to give me advice for general occasions.”

“General occasions,” he repeats, tone veering on cool. “Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t think you should be worrying about that.” He runs his thumb along the edge where cotton met skin. The aquatic motif is sort of cute, he supposes, though in all his years in the bureau, he’s never come across another person to possess her affection for such a strange choice of animal.

“Oh?” she questions, a little breathlessly as he begins to trace the indent of her covered slit.

“They’re going to come off anyway, right?”

Squirming against the cushions, she does indeed entreat him to just take them off, lest she ruin them and have to go home with a bare bottom.

Huh, he thinks, even as he obeys. Now there’s a bit of fodder for fantasy.

But first, the vision spread out before him.

He disentangles the briefs from her ankles and lowers his mouth.

General occasions. A strangely irksome term. Akane is twenty though, and jellyfish panties or not, there would be others more than willing to fill in his place during her lifetime. There’d be others who could lay with her on a real bed. She would most likely want that too, one day. Want someone whom she could bring home to browse the books on her shelves and to see the designs her holo could cast over her room. Shinya remembers what Professor Saiga had observed about Akane, and he is fully aware that he is not the sort of man her parents would want her to bring home.

“Hey,” she says softly, reaching up to touch his furrowed brow, and he decides that he’d rather have her struggling not to cry out from pleasure than looking concerned about him.

“It’s nothing,” he answers, busying himself with the pinkest part of her again. “Just thinking that you might as well forego the underwear on Fridays.”

\-----

A week later, Akane does just that, and it’s pure sin along his fingers as he backs her against an emptied office corner for no one else to see.

* * *

  

_\- helmet -_

The day before the Sibyl System is restored to its full operational capacity, Shinya puts on the helmet for one last ride into the city. His only full stop is at the graveyard where they’ve laid down old Masaoka’s bones. On the fresh mound of soil, he places the old man’s last gift to him. Maybe Gino will spot the keychain and not have to break down the safehouse door.

The deep blue of descending dusk has nearly chased the last vestiges of sunlight to the horizon when he parks the motorcycle to recharge its batteries at a station. It’s past the hour of the business day end, but the office buildings around him are still trickling some of their more diligent occupants. For a second, he considers sliding back the visor for a less obscured view, but then the machine beeps that the battery is full. Well, he can’t afford to overcharge on energy right now. Shinya inwardly laughs at his own foolish hopefulness for standing here so long.

As he swerves the bike out of the station though, he spies a familiar dark blue jacket and zips past a girl whose eyes are downcast but whose steps are resolute.

 

* * *

  
_\- blazer -_

To her surprise, Akane finds sorting through the renounced possessions of an exile quite calming.

She takes down the web of Shinya’s making and surrenders the file cabinets to the ministry’s archival division. She packs away what books she can however and has a drone deliver those boxes to her apartment.

Coming to stand in front of the wardrobe, a sparse selection of black and white, Akane runs her hand gingerly across the succession of suits. Standing this close, she can smell the lingering smoke vested in the sleeves, the particular scent of Spinel that informed her of his vicinity in the office, in the field, in the field where he'd carried her close, and even the usually pleasant aromas of sweet hay and earthy soil had brought her little relief compared to the comfort of him. She can almost conjure up the presence of him at her back. It felt like he had been there forever, protector and mentor and lover and ghost. 

He is not here to teach her how to mourn someone still living. 

Randomly, she selects one of the hangers and pulls down the blazer from its frame.

  
  
This one, she thinks, she just might take home.

**  
**


End file.
